


Clockwork

by elicitillicit



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, F/M, dramione ily tbh, half blood prince
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 10:03:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5123507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elicitillicit/pseuds/elicitillicit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“How did you find me?” he asks, when his breathing has steadied.</p>
<p>“You aren’t the only one hiding things,” she replies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clockwork

**{daybreak}**

 

It’s not surprising that she now practically lives in the library. Harry is grimmer, and paler, and Ron spends hours bent over his grandfather’s chess set, sacrificing knights with steady hands. 

She’s begun stockpiling clothes, medicines, and death magic, bottling explosive reactions in vials-within-vials and brewing poisons in disused bathrooms.

It  _is_ surprising, for a brief moment, that she runs into Malfoy in the Potions section, napping fitfully with a research compendium on belladonna resting on his belly. 

Then she takes a closer look: at the bags under this eyes, the feverish pallor of his skin, and the frightened flinches from nightmares chasing him in the dark. 

Katie Bell’s brush with death is fresh in her mind, and it isn’t difficult for her to connect the dots. She isn’t prepared for pity to be the predominant emotion, though, and she must have made a sound, because he wakes with a start. 

“ _What_ , Mudblood?” he snarls, but there’s none of the expected heat in it; there’s a bone-weary tiredness and a roughness to his voice that scrapes at her, and she surprises  _herself_ by taking a step closer and squinting at the book.

“That one isn’t useful,” she says, and jerks her chin in the direction of the shelves on her left. “Digitalis would be a subtler option.” 

Malfoy scoffs, but doesn’t say anything further. 

Hermione watches him stumble to his feet, and stretches a hand out. He doesn’t take it, but he doesn’t spit into it, either. 

That’s a start. 

 

**{high noon}**

 

“You should go to Dumbledore,” she urges when she comes upon him again in the stacks, red-eyed and wild-haired. 

He starts violently, and almost rips a page out of a bestiary on venomous creatures. 

The book squeaks in annoyance when she lays a hand over his own. He stares at their fingers, interlaced over the leather binding, and she sees his eyes trace the blue of the veins running strong under her skin. 

“It’s not even about blood any more, is it?” she observes, and he shudders in response. 

 

**{walking in my sleep}**

 

She walks up to him while he’s shivering and sweaty and retching in the Room of Requirement.

He doesn’t shy away from the heavy weight of her shoulder pressed against his side.

“How did you find me?” he asks, when his breathing has steadied.

Hermione reaches out and touches the tip of a finger to the mess of bloodied feathers before them. “You aren’t the only one hiding things,” she replies, before Vanishing the bird’s corpse.

He shifts slightly, and she feels the hard pressure of his lips against the side of her head. 

It’s not a kiss - not quite. 

She tucks herself more firmly into his body and reaches for his face.

He kisses her with all the tension coiled in his spine, half desperate and half grasping. 

When they separate, she finds that she’s smeared a faint line of blood over one of his cheekbones. 

“Leave it,” he says, when she moves to wipe it off. 

He kisses her again, and she forgets all about it. 

 

**{and the clock strikes midnight}**

 

It takes her twenty-seven days to unravel the skeins of old magic and re-weave the bridge between one cabinet and the other. 

When the dove returns, whole and fluttering, he throws a window open and waits, patiently, for it to find its way out of captivity. 

He reaches blindly for her hand, and they exhale together into the night. 

 

**{it’s always darkest before the dawn}**

 

It’s time. 

Harry has disappeared again, with Dumbledore, and so Draco presses his forefinger into the ugly scar on his left forearm and throws the doors of the Vanishing Cabinet open. 

Then he stands back. 

Far back. 

Madam Bellatrix Lestrange is the first one out. 

From her hiding place, tucked into a nook burrowed into a stack of forgotten furniture, Hermione raises her wand. 

_Avada Kedavra._

 


End file.
